Mental Health and Substance Use in Rural and Northern British Columbia: A Systematic Review of Prevalence, Risk Factors, and Intervention Effectiveness.

As international migration has become increasingly common in recent decades, driven by factors such as increased international career and education opportunities, natural disasters, and armed conflicts (), more people have been leaving their culture of upbringing to live in societies that may differ significantly from their own. In 2020, nearly 281 million people were living outside their birth country—more than triple the number in 1970 (). The share of international migrants in the global population has also increased, from 2.3% in 1970 to 3.6% in 2020. The United States, which hosts the largest number of international immigrants from nearly every country worldwide, saw its immigrant population rise from 4.7% in 1970 to 14.3% in 2023, reaching a record of 47.8 million and accounting for around one-fifth of the world’s international migrants (). As migration continues to reshape global demographics, it is increasingly important to understand the challenges individuals face when adjusting to a new country (). One factor that has been found to be relevant to how easily people are able to adapt to their acculturation experiences is cultural distance (e.g., )—that is, the difference between the culture of the host society from one’s heritage culture. In general, greater cultural distance has been found to be associated with more difficulty adapting to the host culture and lower well-being (e.g., ), although there are exceptions to this pattern (e.g., ). Additionally, there is some debate over how best to measure cultural distance: some scholars advocate for subjective measures that reflect individuals’ perceived cultural differences (e.g., ; ), while others support objective indicators derived from national-level data (e.g., ; ). Moreover, cultural distance is not just relevant to people’s psychological well-being, but also to how they navigate their adaptation to the host culture (). The present research addresses these different perspectives by examining and comparing the roles of perceived and objective cultural distance in predicting immigrants’ adjustment outcomes, including their acculturation orientation, and their adjustment-related well-being. More specifically, objective cultural distance was measured using the cultural fixation index (; ), a relatively novel way of assessing the distance between any cultural groups.